Well, it certainly appeared to be the ambition of most of the boys in my high school classes (in New York State at the time) to at least appear to be as stupid as possible. In the process of deliberately acting stupid, I'd say that a good many of them actually became stupider as time went by. Kind of like life imitating art... Ever seen the movie "Dumb and Dumber"?

Their ignorance of Canada (and everywhere else) was quite obvious...as was their strange assumption that they lived in "the greatest country in the world". Of course, when you're told that by all your teachers from Grade 1 on, I guess you could be forgiven for ending up believing it.